Mega Drive Floppy Disk Drive

From Sega Retro

The Sega Mega Drive Floppy Disk Drive is an unreleased peripheral for the Sega Mega Drive allowing it to run 3.5-inch floppy disks. It was advertised extensively with earlier shots of the system, though was not put on sale for unknown reasons. It could be seen as a successor to the Master System Floppy Disk Drive, which also remained unreleased.

The floppy disk drive would have fit into the Mega Drive's expansion port, located on the right hand side of the system. This expansion port would later be used for the Sega Mega-CD, and it is unlikely both could be used in conjunction with each other. Later prototypes had the text "FDD" printed in large golden letters on the top.

Reportedly the drive was co-developed by Sony and was dropped in favour of the Mega-CD in 1990[1].

Though a floppy disk drive would bypass the Mega Drive, one would eventually see a release on the Sega Saturn.

Gallery

Prototype Mega Drive with Floppy Disk Drive attached

Scan from the January 1989 issue of Beep! showing the unit (and various others).